The fine art of getting your way

Compliance training is about making people want to do what you would like

When HM Revenue and Customs began a letter to taxpayers explaining most people pay their taxes on time, debt collection increased from 57pc to 86pcPhoto: ALAMY

By Octavius Black

1:28PM BST 14 Jun 2014

The scuba engineers were deep under the ocean fixing a problem with their oil rig. A warning signal told them to come back up but they ignored it, three times. The control room over-rode the automatic system and instructed them to come up immediately, but they carried on working. The chief engineer, whom they knew and respected, told them their lives were at risk and they must return to the surface NOW. They ignored him and continued. Moments later there was an explosion and all the divers died.

The equipment was fully functioning and the engineers had recently been through a refresher course on the protocols. The question that plagued their colleagues, and the psychologists brought in to investigate, was: why did these experienced divers fail to comply?

If you're the boss at a bank, energy utility, accountancy firm or drug company, you live with the constant fear of having your collar felt. You may have put the process in place and set up an internal audit function the size of a village but, if an employee or supplier ignores the rules, you're on the hook.

Getting an increasingly independent-minded workforce to do as they are told is no slim challenge. From "push the envelope" to "think outside the box", the business world's clichés exhort people to bend the rules.

"My best saleswoman is loved by her clients precisely because she's a bit of a rebel," a sales director told me. "But I can't live with the risk that she might not comply, in which case we'll all hang for it."

Bosses want people to think for themselves but then do as they're told. Confused? We all are.

The compliance industry hasn't done itself any favours.

When consultants scored 100pc in a compulsory on-line "diversity" training module, the HR director was initially delighted. Then he learnt about a bug: if you pressed F5 four times, you scored full marks in the test without having to go through the training. You can lead a colleague to e-learning – but you can't make them think.

The answer to the compliance conundrum is not to tell people what to do; it is to set things up so they want to.

The latest book from the scions of Influence, Bob Cialdini, Steve Martin and Noah Goldstein (The small BIG: small changes that spark big influence) is brimming with insight on how to get people to do things they don't want to, like paying a tax bill.

When HM Revenue and Customs began a letter to taxpayers explaining most people pay their taxes on time, debt collection increased from 57pc to 86pc. Response rates rose further when the message included the name of the recipient's town, saying most people there pay taxes promptly.

"I wouldn't be so easily fooled", you may think. But the science says otherwise.

When four potential reasons for saving home energy were proposed to hundreds of Californians, they were unequivocal: "because many of my neighbours already do", would have least impact. Yet when the four reasons (including helping the environment and saving money) were displayed in different homes, this message about the Joneses led to significantly greater energy savings than the other three.

It's not just the specific action that matters. When people see other rules being ignored, they become more rebellious.

The scuba divers stayed down even when they knew their lives were in danger because, in the past, they'd been heroes for stretching the rules and saving the rig.

If, instead, they'd been lambasted for ignoring warnings, known that their peers followed these processes and saw that other procedures were consistently adopted, they'd probably be alive today.

Compliance defiance is the teenager in us screaming: "Don't tell me what to do!" Show me it's how to be part of the gang instead and I'm obediently, albeit unwittingly, yours.